Thursday, 1 March 2012

Virtual user generator (VuGen) Recording options

Virtual user generator (VuGen) Recording options

Difference between HTML-mode, URL-mode and GUI-mode recording

When you are starting to record a web application, you should be aware of the HTML-mode and URL-mode recording that a Web (HTTP/HTML) protocol, we will just briefly talk about the differences (in general) and how it applies to your script.

HTML-mode

HTML-mode recording is the default and recommended recording mode. It records HTML action in the context of the current Web page (which means everything you see on the web page will be recorded in a single function).

The advantage of this mode is that it generates a script that is intuitive to the reader in terms of what is the form requesting (in a form of entire web page). Readers of the scripts will then be able to recognize each “logical” requests/call made to the server, making amendments to the script easily.

URL-mode

The URL-mode option instructs VuGen to record all requests and resources from the server. It automatically records every HTTP resource as URL steps. This recording mode captures even non-HTML applications such as applets and non-browser applications.

The advantage of this mode is that it generates a script that has all known resources downloaded for your viewing. This works good with non-HTML applications such as applets and non-browser applications (e.g. Win32 executables). But having everything together creates another problem of overwhelming low-level information and making the script unintuitive.

When there are unrecognizable requests made to the server in Web (HTTP/HTML) protocol, they are recorded as web_custom_request. However, in URL-mode, this can be selected to allow recording to default to web_custom_request.

GUI-mode

This is introduced with Web (Click & Script) protocol. The GUI-mode option instructs VuGen to record all editable fields in an object or non-browser applications. What it does is to detect the fields that have been edited and generate the scripts accordingly. The concept is similar to functional testing when objects are detected at the GUI-level. When reading the script, it allows easier reading as the script is based on the GUI presented to the real user.